Abortion foes downplay complex post-Roe v. Wade realities

By AMANDA SEITZ and JOSH KELETY
July 28, 2022

In televised statements and interviews, anti-abortion advocates have used misleading rhetoric about abortion access to downplay fallout and complications from restrictive abortion laws as doctors, struggling to interpret laws that have largely been untested in courts, turn away pregnant patients for care.

https://apnews.com/article/abortion-health-ohio-government-and-politics-4eb0712711637e51c3676c852a6b2d7c


USA – Who and what is behind abortion ban trigger law bills? Two groups laid the groundwork

July 8, 2022
Ximena Bustillo

For two decades, abortion rights opponents have drafted so-called model legislation and lobbied to get the measures to restrict and ban abortions passed in statehouses across the country in preparation for the eventual fall of Roe v. Wade.

The model legislation and concerted political pressure from national organizations that oppose abortion rights resulted in key terms being cemented into laws, the limitation of abortion access and the influence behind the trigger laws that will go into effect in 13 states this summer as a result of the Supreme Court's recent decision to overturn Roe.

https://www.npr.org/2022/07/08/1110299496/trigger-laws-13-states-two-groups-laid-groundwork


State Courts Could Overturn Abortion Bans in Red States

May 27, 2022
Christine Vestal

If the federal right to abortion is erased by the U.S. Supreme Court in a few weeks as expected, the legal spotlight will shift immediately to state courts, where experts say judges in some conservative states could surprise everyone and uphold the right to abortion.

“Hundreds of attorneys for abortion advocates across the country are no doubt poised to go into state courts to block enforcement of multiple state abortion laws the minute the decision comes down,” said Clarke Forsythe, senior counsel at Americans United for Life, which opposes abortion. “There will be attempts in all but a few states to create the equivalent of Roe v. Wade.”

Continued: https://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/blogs/stateline/2022/05/27/state-courts-could-overturn-abortion-bans-in-red-states


What the brewing interstate travel wars over abortion portend

Opinion by Mary Ziegler
Mon May 23, 2022

(CNN) The Supreme Court seems ready to undo Roe v. Wade, the landmark case recognizing the right to choose abortion, in a matter of weeks, and blue as well as red states are already preparing for what might be coming next: a conflict between states seeking to facilitate out-of-state travel for abortion and those trying to shut it down.

Strikingly, however, this brewing interstate war would be something relatively new. What has changed to make interstate conflict a possible new front in the abortion wars, and what does it mean for a post-Roe America?

Continued: https://www.cnn.com/2022/05/23/opinions/anti-abortion-movement-geography-ziegler/index.html


A 49-year crusade: Inside the movement to overturn Roe v. Wade

Antiabortion activists and their Republican allies are on the cusp of reaching a goal they have sought for decades in tossing out the 1973 Supreme Court ruling legalizing abortion.

By Michael Scherer, Josh Dawsey, Caroline Kitchener and Rachel Roubein, Washington Post
May 7, 2022

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell still remembers the shock he felt when Donald Trump won the 2016 election. He also recalls what happened next.

“The first thing that came to my mind was the Supreme Court,” McConnell said in an interview this past week, remembering his reaction that night as he watched results from a basement office at the National Republican Senatorial Committee. He soon called Donald McGahn, campaign counsel to the president-elect, who was slated to become the top White House lawyer.

Continued: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/05/07/abortion-movement-roe-wade/


Can red states regulate abortions performed outside their borders? A post-Roe landscape would test just that

By Tierney Sneed, CNN
Sat April 23, 2022

(CNN) If the Supreme Court reverses its long-standing abortion precedent later this year and lets states ban abortions within their borders, it will unleash a new legal and legislative fight over how far anti-abortion lawmakers can reach to target conduct that happens outside their state lines.

At a December hearing on the blockbuster abortion case now before the Supreme Court, the conservative justices who appeared inclined to overturn the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision framed a post-Roe landscape as one where states can choose the contours of their abortion policies for themselves.

Continued: https://www.cnn.com/2022/04/23/politics/abortion-out-of-state-legislation/index.html


USA – Abortion Pills, Once a Workaround, Are Now a Target

In advance of a Supreme Court decision, states are proposing new restrictions and heavier criminal penalties on medication abortion.

By Kate Zernike
April 6, 2022

Last year, after Texas passed its strict abortion ban, surgical abortions in the state dropped by half. Many women found a workaround: pills. The week the law took effect, requests for medication abortion shot up to 138 a day from 11 a day at just one service that delivers the pills by mail.

Anti-abortion lawmakers in the state were already on it. That same week, they passed another law making it a felony to provide abortion pills through the mail and requiring doctors to comply with new testing and reporting procedures to prescribe them.

Continued: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/06/us/abortion-pills.html


The Battle Over the Future of the Anti-Abortion Movement if the Supreme Court Overturns Roe v. Wade

BY ABIGAIL ABRAMS/WASHINGTON, D.C., TIME magazine
MARCH 25, 2022

On a cold, clear weekend in January, tens of thousands of anti-abortion activists convened in Washington for their annual gathering, the March for Life. The mood was triumphant. In the next few months, the U.S. Supreme Court is widely expected to pare back or overturn Roe v. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court decision that established the constitutional right to abortion. Anti-abortion activists have been fighting for this moment for nearly a half century. For three days surrounding the march, they danced and prayed and tearfully embraced in the streets.

But under the surface, the weekend was fraught with tension. For decades, the well-organized, largely grassroots movement has worked to unite a diverse cross-section of American society behind their cause: white evangelicals, as well as some Catholics, Black protestants, Hispanics, and conservative Democrats. Now, with their goal finally in sight, the different factions of the movement have disparate ideas of what a post-Roe world might look like, and how the movement should channel its considerable political power toward achieving those visions.

Continued: https://time.com/6160143/anti-abortion-roe-wade-supreme-court/


USA – Anti-Abortion Groups Once Portrayed Women as Victims. That’s Changing.

March 19, 2022
By Mary Ziegler

With Roe v. Wade on thin ice, state legislatures are producing a wave of anti-abortion bills, some of them truly eye-popping. Missouri alone has in recent weeks tried to limit out-of-state travel for abortion, proposed treating the delivery or shipment of abortion pills as drug trafficking, and moved to make it a felony to perform an abortion in the event of an ectopic pregnancy (in which a fertilized egg implants outside the womb), a condition that can be life-threatening.

In the past, many extreme bills like these would have captured the public’s attention and then quickly disappeared, swept under the rug by lawmakers and abortion opponents who had easier-to-enact plans for dismantling abortion rights.

(This link goes to an unlocked version of the article.) Continued:  https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/19/opinion/abortion-laws-bans-missouri.html?unlocked_article_code=AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACEIPuonUktbfqYhkS1UaCibSRdkhrxqAwvHFx6Ygh3j4aSycVi0Hxe0TGM2F-lzWYrd5Zp0zwzGfDpdnAYMYecZTnKVZLlA_DE6huIeFk5AIZCxp-du4BW5vmsyXUeh9rG7hYCzpcrcuge3h5kjYaGi7WabchGYzZ1ow-esTflGr3XECz63EA7Q1joE4haF9c8g8ETQQZyCKvO3qCQF9MLiGbRLa7Ao1X4JJSG2Z3I7cu_9bLlIkWR-RR2h_4G089NpaJNoXWa3_JBMlc8L66q4DPqR7ajO07TGHKYxX6XKpbQ&referringSource=articleShare&fbclid=IwAR3XEiGRZDlwpR7rVBS_SBHTuzhFumvaYtnRfq5o_9BuR-Etz1hSf56cuoo


Why so many abortion restrictions are working their way through state legislatures now

Anti-abortion lawmakers are trying a variety of approaches to limit access to the procedure — so that they are prepared to restrict access, no matter how the Supreme Court rules.

Shefali Luthra, Health Reporter
March 7, 2022

Florida’s legislature passed a bill that would ban abortion after 15 weeks of pregnancy. Idaho’s Senate approved a bill to block the procedure after six weeks, modeled after Texas’ law. Georgia’s Senate advanced legislation that prohibits using telemedicine for abortion medication. And in Kentucky, the state House voted to pass new restrictions on abortion providers that, if enacted, could effectively shut down clinics in the state.

Legislatures around the country are voting on a variety of abortion restrictions, many of them not in line with the protections that have existed since Roe v. Wade was decided 49 years ago. They’re doing so with an eye on the Supreme Court, set to rule in a case that is widely expected to give more power to states to add limits to the availability of abortion.

Continued: https://19thnews.org/2022/03/why-abortion-restrictions-pushed-state-legislatures-dobbs/